Furthermore, so long as the tax burden is disproportionately leveled on the few, no one can see the growing size of the state. When a citizen outside the tax base, or on a low rung of a progressive tax system, experiences an increased income through expanded redistribution from wealthier citizens, they only experience the net benefit and not the cost. That creates the perverse incentive to support further redistributions. On the other hand, with a flatter and broader tax, everyone feels the growth of government spending. They can also better understand the costs associated with it, driving them to have more realistic preferences and to make more rational demands of the state rather than treating the rich as a perpetual piggy bank.

The same is happening today with cannabis users. People are much more open about their cannabis consumption than they were twenty years ago. And as a result, its usage has become normalized. The peaceful and productive pot smoker is replacing the imagery of the deadbeat, careless, thief. The same level of courage and pride needs to come from us tax rebels. If we try to sneak by we will always be seen as moochers and freeloaders, or rich people who don’t want to pay their “fair share.” The truth is we are principled, compassionate, and productive. We’re somebody’s brother or sister, parent or child.

There are risks in coming out of the closet. But there are risks staying in the closet as well. And if history teaches us anything, the risks are lessened by us openly disobeying. Join me. If you are a tax rebel like me, tell your family. Tell your friends. Tell anybody who cares about you that you do not pay taxes. That is how we will change hearts and minds.

Opposing taxation is not an excuse for big business. By opposing taxation we root for the entrepreneurs, small business owners, worker cooperatives and the self-employed. However “Taxation is theft” must be followed by, “and economic privilege is bribery” otherwise it is rendered meaningless to those who truly seek liberty.

We have been saying for a long time that politicians need to be honest about how much they are taking from us in tax. This is particularly important with the three chunks of our earnings that are snatched by the taxman: Income Tax, Employee's National Insurance and Employer's National Insurance.

As to why we want to abolish it it is disguised taxation. 90% of the country believes that it is actually the companies that pay it. The other 10% of us are aware that it is the shareholders and the workers (in the form of reduced wages) that do. So better to lay the taxes openly on those who really bear the burden than disguising the cost of government from people.

The simple but unspoken truth is that it is never right or moral, even if it is legal, to take money by force from one person and give it to another. That is theft. No one, not even the government, has the right to do it. Theft is theft, no matter who is doing the stealing. The claim that most Americans won’t have to pay more in taxes is not a justification. No matter how much you make, it is never fair to take someone else’s money.

This contradiction lays bare the underlying, concealed premise of all this anti-tax haven blather. What the high-tax countries, such as France, and the political Left really want is an end to tax competition among countries.

Beginning in the 1990s, the social welfare states of Europe, joined by the United States, mounted a campaign portraying tax havens in general as a vast sinkhole of tax evasion and lost revenue.

If someone doesn't move because of high rates of Stamp Duty, they are not just worse off themselves. They won't pay any Stamp Duty and lots of other goods and services won't be bought, meaning jobs won't be created, growth won't happen and taxes won't be collected.

I look forward to the results of your investigation into low wages and am convinced that you will come to the same conclusion that we have. The shockingly low disposable incomes of the working poor in this country are not the result of any meanness or avarice on the part of employers: it is simply that the government taxes the working poor too much. Given this, that we can convert the minimum wage into something better than the living wage simply by ceasing the political depredations upon the pockets of the populace, I assume that your conclusion will be that the personal allowance, including that for national insurance, should be substantially raised.

After all, it's not really a particularly complex point. If you want people to have more money then tax them less.

The current IRS scandal has renewed concerns regarding abuse of IRS power. One flagrant example from the last election was the partisan use of the IRS as a political weapon. The IRS has a history of political abuse. Hoover, FDR, JFK, and Richard Nixon all used the IRS against enemies, long before Clinton or Obama. In the wake of recent scandals, some politicians are now investigating the IRS. IRS officials, like Douglas Shulman, Lois Lerner, and Holly Paz, in their appearances before Congress, have exhibited the arrogance of an entitled aristocrat instead of the public servants that they are.

Think about it like this. The average household will pay £656,000 in taxes over a whole lifetime. The Department of Energy and Climate Change spent more than £700,000 on business class and premium economy flights in just over two years. That's how quickly politicians and bureaucrats can wipe out a family's entire lifetime of hard work. We need to keep up the fight to stop your money being wasted.

The state, by its very nature, is the executive committee of a ruling class. It’s the mechanism by which landlords, usurers, bureaucrats and rentiers extract wealth from the majority of the population. That’s the “civilization” your taxes are paying for.

The tax code isn't a document I can recommend perusing. It's written by lawyers and it's nearly five times as long as the Bible. In some countries, being forced to read it would qualify as a human rights violation. But a closer look reveals an indecorous truth about Washington: What Congress can't accomplish because of the limits of law or public opinion, it can usually backdoor through the tax system.

Legal privilege has never completely disappeared even in the freest markets. But where it has been constrained the most, gradually throughout much of the world over the past 200 years or so, markets and trade have indeed flourished, to the benefit of all—especially the least well-off in society. People became rich and super-rich in unimagined numbers through trade rather than plunder. Plunder, after all, at best redistributes wealth; it never creates it. The rich earned their wealth.

I can understand spending money on things like biodiversity projects and habitat restoration. Those benefit the critters. But having a branch of the Department of Fish and Game for "climate science" and "renewable energy"? That seems to stray quite a bit from the DFG's mission.